The Surprising Way Gigi Hadid Handles Stress Relief

Of all the luxuries one can afford as a 21-year-old supermodel—and, yes, there are many—time doesn’t even come close to making the cut.

“If I’m not working on a day, it’s because I’m in a plane flying somewhere else to do another job,” said Gigi Hadid Wednesday in an interview to promote her new #PerfectNever campaign for Reebok. Also, she said, she’s never taken a sick day.

“With holidays coming up, I’m looking forward to my time off, because it feels like sometimes you don’t have time to deal with anything because you’re always going, and you feel like, ‘Wait, I’m still anxious about this, and I haven’t dealt with that yet,’ and then something happens today and I’m anxious about that,” she said.

Boxing, certainly, is a good way of letting off steam—as we learned during a group training session with Hadid’s trainer, Rob Piela—but the model also has another way of clearing her head when she hits a rough patch (one that’s a little more conducive to doing in, say, the back of an SUV).

Photo: Reebok

“What’s helped me is taking time to just talk to people—talk it out,” she says. “That’s why my friends come into play a lot. Whenever I feel like I can just call them and vent and get some reassurance that I need, that really, really helps me. Just to find people that know what you’re going through—or even if they don’t, just to be able to talk to someone is really important.”

As someone who is a loyal subscriber to the rapid-fire group-text mode of mini-therapy sessions, I had to ask: Call, not text?

“I do text, but I just like talking,” she says. “I think that projecting it is a release of energy that’s really important. And crying’s important [laughs]. Like, even if I’m not sad about something, just when I get overwhelmed, I’m like ahhh. Just to let it out is really good.”

So next time you’re stressed, make like Robyn—uh, and Gigi—and call your girlfriend.